Earlier this week, I had a rather jarring conversation at the supermarket. I needed to flag an employee down to clear an alert on the damnable self-checkout machine. The man had just finished helping another customer, and he was walking away from me, so I said “Sir?”. When turned around to assist, he also muttered “Please don’t call me sir next time”. He seemed…annoyed? Offended? I did not understand, and I was a bit taken aback. It was not as if I had said “Hey, you!”, after all.
As he cleared the error on the machine, I asked what I should say next time. He curtly replied “Just wave your hand, I’ll see you”. This was obvioiusly not true, because unlike my mother, he did not have eyes in the back of his head. Now, I certainly could have just said “Excuse me?”, but that seems longer and also slightly less courteous than a respectful “Sir?”. Anyhow, he and I both moved on. Still, it stuck with me. I left the store, utterly flummoxed.
I found myself contemplating this very strange interaction for some time. I had been trying to be polite, and I felt the response had been a bit brusque, even bordering on rude. The man was a bit younger than I am, so it was perhaps a bit odd for me to call him “sir”, but there was no sarcasm or insincerity on my part. I was being gracious, and I was met with something else.
However, I found the whole thing turned completely upside down while discussing it with my friend Kim, who deserves tremendous credit. The scales fell from my eyes when she said four (mostly) simple words: “Maybe a non-binary person?”.
Well. Fuck.
The whole interaction now looked utterly different. This idea that this person might not identify as male (and thus a “sir”) had not even occurred to me. Now, I saw the possibility that my in-person subconscious assumption was incorrect, along with every instance of the words “he” and “man” written above. If that is indeed the case, then my simple effort to politely get someone’s attention instead turned me into an inadvertent misgendering ass.
We don’t really have a simple and generic word for directly addressing a specific person. There is no singular of “folks”. We rely on “sir” or “ma’am” or “miss” or “mister”, all of which are gendered. That’s a problem.
Fortunately, my favorite gal pal Amy had a wonderful solution. Her suggestion? Let’s just call everyone “hoss”, as in “Hey hoss, can you get this stupid machine to stop pitching a fit about the bag I’m just trying to load my scanned groceries in to?”. It’s pretty solid! If they mishear you, they’ll think you said “boss”, and who is that going to offend?1
However, while “hoss” is an absolutely hilarious way to refer to anyone, its roots are in the word “horse”. That seems unfortunate at best for a catch-all term. I also rejected Amy’s next idea, “dollface”, which was equally hilarious but even more problematic. Next, I spent some time considering “buddy”. I wish it could work, but it just sounds far too informal to my ear.
Thankfully, though, “buddy” led me to a superior option: “friend”. “Friend”! How great is that? It’s self-evidently friendly, it’s gender-neutral, and it’s even hopeful. A stranger is just a friend I haven’t met yet, and what faster way to turn them into a friend than to simply declare them one?
Sure, sure, it might come across as vaguely Amish, but then they’ll really take pity on me. I don’t even have electricity, so of course I can’t manage to check myself out at the supermarket! Or perhaps they’ll think I’m trying to recruit them to a cult. They may be wary, and think I might murder them, but at least they won’t think I’m a bigot.
So, I’ve settled on “friend” as the way I’m going to address people from now on.2 I’ll let you know how it goes, friends.
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